


in your cage (a bird's cry)

by antagonists



Series: Summoner AU [2]
Category: Gintama
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-13
Updated: 2016-01-13
Packaged: 2018-05-13 20:27:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5715979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/antagonists/pseuds/antagonists
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sandals by the shore, overtaken by the high tides. Soon they walk the seas.</p><p>Inked paper, fluttering, fluttering. Ink meets lips, spell meets tongue—spills, into the shadow of night.</p><p>By the ocean, a lone boy traces magic into the sands.</p>
            </blockquote>





	in your cage (a bird's cry)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [korvetten](https://archiveofourown.org/users/korvetten/gifts).



> PREQUEL TO PARTS 1-2

_"‘I exist.’ In thousands of agonies – I exist. I’m tormented on the rack – but I exist! Though I sit alone in a pillar – I exist! I see the sun, and if I don’t see the sun, I know it’s there. And there’s a whole life in that, in knowing that the sun is there."_

_FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY_

 

+

 

 

Sandals by the shore, overtaken by the high tides. Soon they walk the seas.

 

Inked paper, fluttering, fluttering. Ink meets lips, spell meets tongue—spills, into the shadow of night.

 

By the ocean, a lone boy traces magic into the sands.

 

 

+

 

 

“You’re skipping lessons again,” his mother tells him. She acts as though she knows nothing, but her eyes are the ones that catch him underneath the eaves at early starlight, practicing recitations and taboo.

 

He ignores her, continues to let his mind wander as his eyes stare over the neat calligraphy in front of him. Politics, history, structure of the imperial family. (Secretly, how to bend, how to be broken, how to be carved into a gold piece for a lord. Others may not care, but he does. He won’t be broken).

 

“Shinsuke,” his mother says, more sharply. He does not hear her.

 

“Shinsuke,” Gintoki says when he’s stolen away in the middle of the night, moonlight awash his back and in his eyes. They’re huddled on a cliff hanging over tumultuous waves, hands stretched towards the little pillar of fire that Shinsuke had summoned. Next to them: a few stolen sticks of dango, Katsura’s onigiri wrapped in leaf, incomplete spells scratched into dirt. Somewhere, the laughter of spirits echo; he has always been fascinated with how they follow Gintoki around.

 

“What,” he murmurs, transfixed by the glimmer of the night sky over the ocean. From here, it looks like a cracked mirror. From closer, he knows it to be cold death. In another time, he has walked atop the deep, unending waters.

 

In Gintoki’s hands are jade magatama.

 

 _Like your eyes,_ Gintoki tells him. Shinsuke tosses them into the sea; they glitter like teardrops as they fall.

 

 

+

 

 

The next day, when the sun is bright and piercing through the paper doors, Shinsuke hides the magic at his fingers and bows to his father. Beneath his long sleeves are deep bruises and scratches, burned into his skin by tree bark as he’d chased after someone trapped halfway between war and nothing. They do not hurt, but whenever he runs his fingers over historical texts and the clean paper for his calligraphy practices, they seem to pulse with a malicious sorrow.

 

Sometimes, when he is alone, the pain will cause his hands to shake.

 

“I need you to stop doing that,” he tells Gintoki after he’s run away for sure, rubbing at the chafing marks on his arms. “They’re annoying.”

 

“I don’t want to.”

 

Under Gintoki’s influence, the marks do not heal. If anything, they seem to grip even harder at his skin, like cruel fingers. Gintoki has never had a gentle touch in the first place; his only magic is the smoke on his tongue, the blight through his veins. After spending so much time around the vengeful dead spirits, Gintoki has almost become one himself. Behind him, a cape of thick fog, a sad amalgamation of nightmares. When he sighs, a wisp of silver breath.

 

Gintoki shrugs, picks at his nose. Next to him, Katsura continues shaping the rice. He is almost obsessed with it, as if molding the white will erase the memories of his past. Perhaps the constant contact grounds him to the real world.

 

Broken, the two of them are. But Shinsuki isn’t like them. He isn’t broken.

 

“Want one?” Katsura asks him, holding out a perfectly-shaped onigiri. Shinsuke still hesitates when he takes one, but he’s getting better about accepting it, he thinks. He stares at the row of magatama strung around Gintoki’s neck as he chews. They glitter silently, menacingly, lovingly, embodying the different ghosts that Gintoki both embraces and runs from. On the left side, there is a cracked magatama, jade, glowing like the sea. Gintoki must’ve gone searching in the cold waters for it.

 

For some reason, Shinsuke feels no less worthless.

 

“What about Master Shoyou?”

 

“He told us to start practicing on our own first,” Katsura yawns. It’s nearing midnight. The moon is high in the sky—shines down on the ancient shrine they use as their training grounds. When they step through the marked, wooden gates, the world seems a much chillier, quieter place. No matter how many times he sets foot onto the stone grounds, he is unable to leave a lasting footprint.

 

Katsura calls on his magic, long hair like the wind itself. He’s always looked nice with his gentle eyes shut, seeing into a world vastly different. His fingers, seemingly frail, can seize fire with a surprising lack of mercy. From his lips—unkind spells, dark words that fester with hidden flame. Even though his spells are malevolent, he can control the crackle of fire and bend it into something nice, something warm.

 

Not Shinsuke; his fire only hurts, only burns. He has tried commanding it before, but it instead drags him through a field of cursed memories, pushes his mind to the border of hell as the fire eats away at his palms. At times he’ll cry and let the nightmares overcome him, other times Gintoki will calm the inferno, step over the coals and set his cold fingers over Shinsuke’s eyelids.

 

“Don’t cry, Shinsuke.”

 

Gintoki’s dreams are even more terrifying, even darker and bloodier, but Shinsuke can bear them as long as he is not alone.

 

 

+

 

 

They are older now, but still young, and war seeks them from the horizon. Words from an elder carved into wood, painted over thick banners, hammered into the metal on their foreheads. There has been a large shortage of bandages, lately.

 

The people fear them, their magic. They are spitefully called Summoners, those who summon evil spirits to do their deeds. It’s all propaganda, of course, but it doesn’t surprised him that they are labeled out of fright. The magic they wield is sacred; their Master had taught it so. (And yet the people laugh at them, and yet the people scorn their Master).

 

“Shinsuke,” Gintoki calls to him over Sakamoto’s bizarre cackling. For a few moments, the angry buzz in Shinsuke’s ears dies down. He looks up from the bloody ground to a demon and a graveyard. A horde of ghosts stand behind Gintoki, haunting and pleading.

 

“Yeah,” he says numbly instead of outright staring at the smudge of blue and purple across Gintoki’s cheek. It looks good on Gintoki. But really, Gintoki always look nice with any sort of violent color on his skin and in his eyes. Shinsuke sometimes wants to drag his nails down that skin and leave trails of blood. Wants to engrave burns that Gintoki won’t be able to wash away. Wants to hurt him.

 

These thoughts plague him at night, sometimes, when the battlefields are still. Sometimes during the day, too, when the sun is reflecting stolen dreams over Gintoki’s hair. Still, the echoes of a name on his lips curl guiltily through his anguish.

 

“I’ll bandage your arm?” Gintoki offers, and Shinsuke’s skin tingles as chilly fingers smooth down the bandages.

 

 

+

 

 

The cry of black birds is loud over war. Even louder are the remnants of singing metal and prayers. Shinsuke’s eye hurts.

 

Well—the place where an eye had used to be hurts. He still sees Gintoki through the haze of blood and betrayal, thinks that maybe having a sword all the way through his head is better than this. In front of him, a headless body, slashes of red sunk into dirt; behind him, an army of malicious spirits, watching their futile, worldly struggle with their expressionless faces. Shinsuke hates them, but he hates himself more. Past all of the pain searing through his head, Gintoki’s sad, broken back burns him the most.

 

In the rain, a little boy weeps. Shinsuke watches the child with his white hair and his red eyes, overcome by grief, and swallows the resentful tears, collapses. When they return to their meager camp and sit shivering by the fires, Katsura’s onigiri tastes stale. Shinsuke is feverish and stares up at nothing while warm hands tend to him, craves an icy touch but cannot say anything past his tears.

 

“It hurts,” he whispers, to no one in particular. No one hears him, really, no one but the ghosts of the war and famine. He repeats this several times, and out of darkness emerges a pale hand to cover his eyes, to burn chillingly down to his bones.

 

“Shh,” a voice tells him. His hair is plastered to his head, drying blood itches, he tries in vain to _see_ —yet the silver nightmares curse him over and over. “Sleep, now.”

 

Shinsuke opens his mouth to speak, feels cold breath on his lips, and sighs instead.

 

 

+

 

 

Sakamoto leaves, too, entranced by the stars and the idea of fleeing to a better place.

 

Shinsuke lets him. The beads around Gintoki’s neck glimmer dully, like old tears.

 

 

+

 

 

He sees Gintoki travel the mountains, years later, when they’ve both broken free of dirty prisons and of ideal worlds. Disappearing into the snow, veiled by the fog that wishes to both consume him and protect him, he runs away into a little town far away from the past fighting. His back isn’t so straight anymore, but maybe the crooked lines house more than just scars.

 

Shinsuke hates it, but he’s been good at hating things for a while now. He watches with his one eye, irritably exhales a stream of bitter, bitter smoke. It’s a faint white-grey, but not enough to replicate a demon’s breath. His fingers twitch often, as if possessing destructive minds of their own; if he isn’t careful, sometimes he will mindlessly set things ablaze. (He doesn’t notice the chaos—it’s become much too quiet, now).

 

He heads seaward, bewitched by the gleam of emerald and harsh blue. From his lips trail a wanting smoke.

 

 

+

**Author's Note:**

> welcoming Em back to gintama hell
> 
> im only inspired by suffering to make more suffering \o/


End file.
